Padres' Dee has responsibility he wanted

Padres President and CEO Mike Dee, center, answers questions during a press conference at Petco Park on Tuesday, August 20th, 2013. To the left is Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler and to the right is Padres lead investor Peter Seidler.
— Andy Wilhelm

Padres President and CEO Mike Dee, center, answers questions during a press conference at Petco Park on Tuesday, August 20th, 2013. To the left is Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler and to the right is Padres lead investor Peter Seidler.
— Andy Wilhelm

Dee came back to San Diego a little less than a year ago because he wanted to be part of building something. In that, he wanted to grow in the scope of his work.

Now, as Padres CEO, he has say not just when decisions are being made about which Saturday to give away faux jerseys and which to hand out gratis fedoras. Dee is in on baseball decisions. In, big time.

This is more than he did as the Miami Dolphins’ President or as Chief Operating Officer of the Boston Red Sox. It’s different than what Tom Garfinkel, the man Dee replaced here, had as his duties.

Dee is in on everything now.

There is no one more powerful person outside of the team's two primary owners, Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler.

Dee is the one who sat at the table with Seidler and Fowler much of May and June debating the merits of firing manager Bud Black and/or general manager Josh Byrnes and/or a hitting coach and/or two hitting coaches and/or trading away the entire roster.

Dee put a significant voice to the decision to axe Byrnes a little more than a week ago. And Dee is among the threesome conducting interviews of potential replacements. (The second of what is expected to be about a dozen candidates was interviewed Monday in a process expected to stretch into early August.)

Firing someone is easy. Hiring the right person, that’s the trick. There has been a lot of turnover among the brass around here. In pro sports, turnover is synonymous with tumult.

The Padres need to nail this hire.

For that chore, we can rightly look to Dee.

He is the most connected of the power trio running things. He helps shape the opinions and focus of Seidler and Fowler. The owners speak glowingly of him, clearly trusting him, almost to the point of implicitly.

Good for him. And potentially bad.

With great responsibility comes not only great expectations but one great inevitability – that, sooner or later, depending almost entirely on results, he won’t be here.

Dee is the only one among the Padres’ top triumvirate that is expendable. Owners don’t get fired.

The challenge for Dee is that he could make a great hire and no one will ever be able to prove it.

You can't even put a finger on what's wrong with Padres -- if only because you don't have enough fingers to place on all that ails them. The next GM could be the most astute talent evaluator the game has ever known, and the Padres could still go another few years without making the playoffs.

Maybe the Padres will find the good health and good luck next year that those of us who thought they might contend this year figured they were due. But probably not, right?

Fact is, they won’t ever be among the game’s top spenders. And they shouldn’t be. They need to build the mid-size market way, from within and over time. We all need to understand that, including the guys in charge.

Ownership, in its second offseason, opened its wallet. But it was the first time that had been done in a while, and the Padres’ payroll remains lowest in the National League West.

No one here should expect to emulate the Oakland A’s until more time has passed and whoever is building the roster and its feeder system has had some time to do so.

The Padres bosses didn’t believe Byrnes was the guy to get them where they wanted to go. That’s fine. It’s their call to let him go in the middle of just his third season.

Presumably, as a hire of the current ownership, the new GM will be given more than 2½ years to undo decades of damage. He should be.